From The Ethics Alarms “Horrible People” Files: The Vile Progressive Professor (Yes, Another One, and Yes, I Would Fire Her)

Randa Jarrar, a professor in the English department at California State University, Fresno (That’s her above: am I the only one that finds her expression unsettling?) tweeted an hour after Barbara Bush’s death was announced,

“Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal. Fuck outta here with your nice words.”

Later, she added that she was happy that George W. Bush was probably sad that his mother had died, and…

“PSA: either you are against these pieces of shit and their genocidal ways or you’re part of the problem. That’s actually how simple this is. I’m happy the witch is dead. Can’t wait for the rest of her family to fall to their demise the way 1.5 million Iraqis have.”

After her ugly Twitter hate-storm tweets generated more than 2,000 critical replies, the professor posted a phone number suggesting that it was a way to reach her. No, it was really the number of a crisis and suicide prevention center, causing their phones to be swamped.Tweeted Eugene Gu, MD, a pediatric surgeon,

“Replying to @randajarrar. Your freedom of speech does not entitle you to have all these people spam an actual mental health crisis line. Please stop,”

This completely gratuitous embarrassment to CSU Fresno caused the president of the school to respond with a public statement, also via Twitter:

This is a cop-out extraordinaire, and craven, as academic administrators wont to be. She obviously was not commenting as a private citizen, or she would not have taunted critics with this…

“I work as a tenured professor. I make 100K a year doing that. I will never be fired. I will always have people wanting to hear what I have to say.”

If she were not a professor, nobody would care what she had to say. Jarrar acknowledged that she was using her position as a platform as well as a shield, and even if she wasn’t, she should be fired. Her conduct makes it clear that this school employs at least one vicious, politically-polluted teacher lacking decency, proportion, judgment, common sense, or a sense of responsibility. That raises a prima facie case that the school cannot be trusted to educate impressionable young minds, if its standards and hiring practices are so flawed. It is not a free speech issue; it is an employee gross misconduct issue. She has embarrassed and harmed the institution.

Progressives are being represented in the public square by a great many truly reprehensible individuals. Progressives ought to worry about that: the Cognitive Dissonance Scale applies. The more proudly progressive professors who reveal their essential rottenness, the less attractive the ideological banner they carry becomes. Is it possible that they don’t understand this?

I wouldn’t trust anyone who makes statements like the professor’s tweets, and I wouldn’t trust or respect anyone who can’t understand why they are definitive evidence of a cruel mind, a rotting soul, and a sick ideological fanaticism.

I’m biased, because Randa was my fiction professor. I have her novel, which I liked a lot. She was incredibly supportive of me as a writer. I do know other students who’ve reported less great experiences with her. One of my best friends, who is more conservative than me, has said Randa was consistently rude to her when she was a student; whether that’s true or if it has anything to do with her politics, I don’t know.

I’ve followed Randa on Twitter for years, and in that time I’ve seen her tweet many things I found needlessly inflammatory and offensive. I think you may have written about her before, Jack–the last time she got this kind of news attention was for an article in Salon called “Why I Can’t Stand White Belly Dancers.” Even though I think cultural appropriation is a Thing, I completely disagreed with her take there.

I was very disappointed to see many Twitter accounts I follow last night tweeting out hatred for Barbara Bush and basically gloating about her death, and especially disappointed that Randa was among them. That said, I don’t think she should be fired for what she said. I don’t think her mentioning her job in explaining why she shouldn’t be fired can be used to show that she was acting as an employee of Fresno State at the time. I also don’t think it shows that she can’t be trusted to teach. I’d think the same of professors who tweeted hateful things when Ted Kennedy died. Heck, we had a regular on this blog recently say he’ll be glad when Jimmy Carter dies. I don’t think he should lose his job if that tweet is discovered.

I do think it would be valid to fire her for the suicide hotline bullshit, though.

I agree that this is likely. However, on two occasions acquaintances of mine gave out what they thought were fake phone numbers to put off harassers, only to discover that they went, in one case, to a funeral home, and in the other, to a little old lady’s residence. That’s one reason not to try to give out fake numbers.

Good points. However, if I’m not mistaken, I believe Randa has either taught at or was a student at Arizona State, which is where this particular crisis center was. That would be an awfully big coincidence if it was unintentional.

Jack,
This is not the first time that an Progressive extremist has used this kind of intentional tactic directed at people that disagree with them, I’ve seen it multiple times. If my buddy or I can find it in our archives I’ll share it.

If it had been the crisis lines I have worked on for nearly 25 years, that would have been tantamount to blocking 9-1-1. Suicide is only one of the crises we deal with, including fire and active homicidal threats. When it became clear that there were going to be more than seven or eight of these calls, she would have had police (her local constabulary) on her doorstep in about 10 minutes and have been arrested if she refused to stop the message instantly. At least one volunteer would have had quietly elicited the source of the problem (we’re verrry good at that), probably done enough ‘active listening’ to calm the caller and, at the same time, he would have signaled someone else in the call room to notify the police with Jarrars name and the number she was using.

By the way: THAT’S the way to flag a possible conflict of interest. If you had defended her and not mentioned the connection, that would have been a Hannity. You flagged it, and I’m convinced, reading what you wrote, that your association with her isn’t affecting your verdict on the firing issue.

I think a lot of the nonsense you’ve written over the last few years have caused my reading of your comments to be biased. My first reading of your comment was that there was an indirect King Pass kind of rationalization being used that steered you towards these statements – “I don’t think she should be fired for what she said. I don’t think her mentioning her job in explaining why she shouldn’t be fired can be used to show that she was acting as an employee of Fresno State at the time. I also don’t think it shows that she can’t be trusted to teach.” After rereading your comment many times, I think I may have jumped the gun with my initial review and for that I apologize.

I would like to voice my opinion about these things you wrote, “I don’t think she should be fired for what she said.”, “I also don’t think it shows that she can’t be trusted to teach.” I categorically disagree with this assessment. A person that is this obviously consumed with her hate in a very ideological way and allows that hate to control her judgement in the manner in which she did cannot be reasonably trusted to teach students in a professional manner where that ideological hate does not creep into the lecture hall in a way that is steered to indoctrinate. I think she should be fired based on her inability to make rational decisions when her ideological hate is inflamed. Words do have consequences. This person IS a representative of the college where she teaches and they need to take that into consideration.

Additionally: I think the college has an out, I think they can easily find a way of dismissing her for sharing the telephone number of the crisis and suicide prevention center – again this is proof positive of her inability to make rational decisions.

I understand your position here and can respect it. If Fresno State chose to fire her, I wouldn’t be up in arms about it. I personally feel that she was a good instructor, but as I said others have had different experiences and if she does let her political biases influence here treatment of students that is unacceptable.

As I said, she was my fiction professor. We wrote short stories. Haven’t published any, though I have published a couple poems and an essay. This was quite a few years ago, though—I never was dedicated enough or brave enough to make a career of it.

Chris,
Teachers blow lots of sunshine towards students that show reasonable levels of skills in their chosen fields. Some have a bad habit of “feeding” those students and nearly ignoring the rest.

I had a creative writing professor, an accomplished writer, that made an appointment with me during my second class with her to blow a huge pile of sunshine my way trying to get me to switch degrees to a creative writing degree and tell me straight to my face that she though I should be a writer. Furthermore; I had a technical writing professor that had a company he worked with contact me directly and tried to hire me two years before I was done with college, move me and my family to silicon valley area and offered a six figure salary; I turned them down flat. Later in college a physics professor approached me offering a nice scholarship to switch majors to something related to either plasma or propulsion physics.

What’s my point? Professors are in constant search for those students that step out of the average and excel at something related to their fields of study. There is a tremendous amount of networking these professors do, their tentacles are wide-spread.

P.S. I’m enjoying life (not in CAlifornia) and interestingly enough, I do a fair amount of pretty detailed technical writing within my network but that’s really only a small piece of what I do.

In the immortal words of Roger Clemens, Chris mis-remembers. Steve-O wrote earlier this month,

“I have a full essay prepared for the death of Jimmy Carter, which I am planning to release as soon as his death is announced, partly because I loathe the man, partly because I loathe the left and want to see their reaction when their own tactics are used against them. It is a scholarly essay though.”

There is no fair way to read this as a statement that he will be “glad” when Jimmy dies. Naturally, when someone loathes a public figure, one may choose to make that assumption, but no one could fairly equate “I loathe you” with “I will be glad when you die.”

But I think there’s a difference between cheering the death of a terrorist who killed millions, and cheering the death of a mainstream politician in the U.S…the reaction to Kennedy’s death is a bit more understandable than the reaction to Barbara Bush’s because Kennedy was directly involved in the death of a woman caused by his own negligence and cowardice, but IMO, still wrong.

There’s a rhetorical device, and I’m sure it has a technical term that I don’t know, that I’ll call “understated difference”. Where the speaker/writer knows (and presumes the audience ALSO knows) there is a clear distinction, but communicates this as only “a bit”.

Having MORE sympathy for Group A than for Group B does not imply any sympathy at all for Group B.

I do think it would not be inappropriate to point out Barbara Bush’s insensitive and sometimes possibly racist comments about Hurricane Katrina survivors and Iraqi children, which Randa cited as part of her motivation. But doing that while saying you’re glad she’s dead is way over the line.

Chris wrote, “Having MORE sympathy for Group A than for Group B does not imply any sympathy at all for Group B.”

Only a stupid person would fall for that hogwash.

Saying moreactually does imply that some exists for the lesser group otherwise there would be no reason to make to a comparison without stating that you have zero sympathy for the Barbara Bush bashers.

Now it sounds like you are beginning to lay out your justifications for feeling some sympathy for the Barbara Bush bashers. Additionally; if you’re going to make a claim like that then you’re going to need to provide the quotes.

“I watch none. He [former President Bush] sits and listens and I read books, because I know perfectly well that, don’t take offense, that 90 percent of what I hear on television is supposition, when we’re talking about the news. And he’s not, not as understanding of my pettiness about that. But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it’s gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it’s, it’s not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that? And watch him suffer.”

Now that I’ve seen the full quote and read Snopes’ supporting context for it I see it differently than I did originally; the excerpts I had read before were lacking context and being spun to make it seem like she was saying actual deaths of Iraqi civilians were irrelevant, when actually she was saying speculation of potential death tolls was irrelevant (the war hadn’t started yet). So I retract that part of my initial comment; I don’t think this comment of Bush’s can fairly be used to portray her as insensitive or racist at all. Another point docked from the Barbara bashers. Thanks for motivating me to look that quote up; I might have continued holding an incorrect idea had you not motivated me to research further.

I say that because it’s the truth, partly because my social media at the time was going crazy with “Oh no, the Senate’s liberal lion is gone, what’ll we do?” and “rot in hell, Kennedy!” comments, partly because I was pissed at Ted Rall’s essay saying Reagan was in hell and thought I would give the left a taste of their own medicine.

With all due respect Steve, if you just react to the unethical behavior of others by returning the same unethical behavior then you are invoking rationalizations 2, 2a, and 7 and you’re no better than the ones you’re reacting to.

Why is a blog comment different from a tweet? Both had the same underlying message of being glad when/if a public figure is dead. I suppose you could argue it’s worse to say such a thing after someone dies then before they die.

The “anonymous” distinction is perhaps useful; is it worse to make such a comment under the veil of anonymity rather than under one’s own name? Is it worse when it comes from a semi-public figure like Randa Jarrar does it? I could be open to both arguments.

Randa’s initial tweets did not make reference to her employer; those only started when people started saying she should be fired.

My first reaction is that making an ugly comment under your real full name/official communication lines means you are asserting full ownership of that comment and binding it to you directly. Making an ugly comment in an anonymous/unofficial forum should confer a degree of distance- that even if someone CAN figure out who said it, it should be considered to be a less serious statement with less tie to your “real life.” Obviously that’s not a concrete enforceable distinction.

I’d compare it to saying something in a meeting at work, vs saying something in the lunchroom, vs a colleague overhearing you at a restaurant while you talk to friends. It seems reasonable that something that would get you fired in the first case or reprimanded in the second would not be reasonably expected to be a problem in the third case.

Twitter complicates things though- as with Trump, is she using a personal Twitter account? Does she use her personal Twitter to conduct official business? If it’s strictly personal I see more distance between this and her job. If she uses this Twitter account to disseminate information important to the students, she’s already made it clear it’s her *Official Professor Stance* Twitter.

I really, really don’t like being that rude to a former First Lady. She always seemed the epitome of political wife, and THAT does not make her guilty in any crimes her husband or son did. (and really it was clear in 2016 they were not endorsing Mr Trump so this hate-on is just wierd) Why attack a woman who didn’t take on a particularly empowered role? Regardless, she still stayed in the more restrained political role, instead of today’s bitter hatreds and unrestrained bias. I miss that.

She can be rude all she wants. I don’t have to listen to her. That doesn’t mean she cannot be criticized just as harshly. Golden rule. You can be critical and scathing without foul language or glee in linked deaths.

I do think mockingly giving out the crisis center’s number is fireable action. That’s calling fire in the theater, when the other people calling are in danger and now cannot get through. She made a crowded stampede that blocked a needed service where people will be hurt. That is NOT free speech.

“We understand the concern from the community and we are taking this very seriously,” (FSU Provost Lynette) Zelezny said, according to The Fresno Bee. “To answer the technical question: Can she NOT be fired? The answer is NO.” (bolds/caps mine)

I was unaware of the suicide prevention hotline post. Everything else aside, that is a step over the line that should lead to termination, since it put a third party mental health provider in the middle of a deliberately ignited conflict that was started either because this woman wanted her 15 minutes of fame or is just that full of hate.

I don’t know what I think about the ethics of cheering someone else’s death. I cheered bin Laden’s death, along with most of the nation. I cheered the death of a jerk who had bullied me online. I cheered the death of Ted Kennedy because I hated him and was disgusted with a certain cartoonist’s hate spew regarding the death of Reagan. I have a full essay prepared for the death of Jimmy Carter, which I am planning to release as soon as his death is announced, partly because I loathe the man, partly because I loathe the left and want to see their reaction when their own tactics are used against them. It is a scholarly essay though.

I have never understood how faculty could do things like this. Faculty at colleges and universities are expected to teach students. They are supposed to impart a definite set of knowledge and/or skills to students and then impartially judge how well those students have learned the material. If you publicly state that you hate a certain group of people under your own name and your professional affiliation, how can you reasonably do that? Now, it is a lot easier if you are a math professor. You just look at the solution and the numbers and grade accordingly. If you are a humanities professor, however, you are judging people based on their ideas and how they are presented. It would be virtually impossible for you to do your job if you had strong ideological views that involved hating groups of people. I don’t see how this behavior doesn’t entitle every conservative student who has ever taken her course to a grade appeal.

Everyone has their private views. Everyone has pet peeves that they hate. Everyone has an ideology that they adhere to. However, if you can’t let that go on the job and grade students fairly according to their work, you can’t do your job. Yes, this become difficult if a student actively antagonizes you in or out of class, but you need to be able to recognize that and (if necessary) bring someone else in to tell you if you are being fair or not.

I enjoyed many great teachers as a student. I taught for a few years. I descend from teachers on both sides of my family. I think teaching is one of the monumentally important aspects of any civilization. At a minimum, teachers are adult models for their students. How can anyone who would say the following be considered eligible to be a teacher at any level, never mind post secondary:

“I work as a tenured professor. I make 100K a year doing that. I will never be fired. I will always have people wanting to hear what I have to say.”

Is “entitled brat” too strong a description of this woman? Mind boggling. I can’t imagine being in a classroom with someone like this, never mind have them lead that class.

I work in higher ed (as staff, not faculty), and “entitled brat” is unfortunately a common trait among many professors. Not all, but more the rule than the exception. And I communicate with peers across the country who say the same thing.

As to tenure and not able to be fired, all it means is there is a defined process to fire them. I’ve seen a number of tenured professors shown the door.

For the administration, they tend to be more politician than CEO. They tend to be politicians who never give any strong views unless they know they will be supported by 90% of the campus.

I’m seeing an absolute deluge of comments online rehashing the general theme of: “You free speech activists sure seem to discard your principles when it’s convenient.” And It’d like to take a moment to dissect that.

Before I get too far into these weeds, I want to make a distinction: I think the cleanest comparison between the left and the right on this issue would be the left’s protection of Randa from firing, and a situation where the right protected someone who had invoked the ire of the left. Let’s assume a Nazi, they would. I don’t think there’s a large contingent of people lining up to say that employers should retain people who are openly anti-Semitic… There might be some, but I feel this would be the exception as opposed to the rule, and that these people would be warping the principle of free speech to things they shouldn’t. This means that almost by nature, the people saying variations of “You free speech activists sure seem to discard your principles when it’s convenient.” Are almost certainly comparing apples to oranges.

But I think that those people don’t really understand the distinction that makes that true. Following that… Cast Iron Pot, meet Stainless Steel Kettle. I’m just saying…. It would be great if just for once progressives actually lived up to their own ideals. If they believe, as they’ve been telling us for years now, that free speech has consequences, and they believe that this case is actually synonymous to all the other cases that they think prove the abject hypocrisy of the right, then by all means point out that hypocrisy, but do so in a way that doesn’t protect Randa… Because you’re admitting what she did wasn’t protected. Look, there’s a possibility that someone in any situation might be able to define a difference between two situations that you might not see. They might be wrong, but there could be at least a semblance of internal consistency, even if it’s flawed… If you think that this is the kind of situation that the free speechers would normally be defending but aren’t for partisan reasons, while simultaneously are defending what you admit you would normally not specifically for partisan reasons, then you don’t even have the fig leaf of internal consistency and should hide your head in a sack.

The principle of free speech doesn’t make someone free from consequences, as in every other situation this issue has come up, the people I’m interacting with would tell me (talk about projection re: discarding principles) even though they’re probably confusing “consequence” with “prevention”. Free speech covers the right to speak, and the right to hear what someone else has to say, but it doesn’t mean that once you’ve said things, your employer cannot fire you, it doesn’t mean that your friends must remain your friends, that people cannot criticize your speech, or mock you for it. Although because of the first amendment, in America, unlike… say… the UK… Whatever you say probably won’t have you end up in jail (I’m thinking Markus Meecham).

Because we’re talking about a State school, the first amendment actually does give her a little more protection than the average employee, but the first amendment and tenure are not suicide pacts, and there are specific tests to determine whether Randa was acting as an employee or as a citizen. Randa could not be fired merely for saying some variation of the theme “Ding Dong The Witch is Dead”, as distasteful as that is, on Twitter, because the government, even while happening to be an employer, cannot punish speech made outside the scope of an employment. The problem for Randa is twofold: One…. She tied some of her tweets to her employment, which is stupid in the extreme. And two: She directed harassment to the school’s crisis hotline. I think Jack is being overly kind here…. even if she wasn’t aware the phone number was the crisis hotline, she still knew that number wasn’t hers, and that SOMEONE would most probably be left bearing the brunt of her fallout. Either of those things individually would probably satisfy the legal tests to determine that the relationship between Randa and the government was more appropriately seen as employee/employer than citizen/government, and together the case is just stronger.

That’s the legal case… The principles question though…. Is the call for Randa to be fired materially different from calling for boycotts, de-platforming, and advertiser withdrawals? It’s amazingly easy to draw a distinction between the de-platforming movements and Randa. Randa is being punished for speaking, progressives are attempting to de-platform in order to prevent someone from speaking, and other people from hearing. But is there a distinction between calling for someone to be fired for gleefully celebrating the death of a person for purely partisan reasons and calling for the boycott of companies that have said something an individual deems offensive, or writing advertisers of those companies to have them pull their support?

I think that a distinction has to be made between punishing companies and individuals. Action against organizations should happen for organizational behavior, or behavior reasonably tied to that organization. Hannity failing to disclose the conflict of interest towards someone he featured on his program is FOX’s problem, The CEO of Chic-fil-A privately donating to a Prop-8 organization is the CEO’s problem.

But is a boycott of FOX in the case above a free speech issue? Is there a material distinction between calling for Randa to be fired and calling for an organised boycott of FOX? I’m struggling with this perhaps more than I should be. What do you all think?

Randa Jarrar is obviously an inconsiderate jerk. In America, people have that right. I’ll support the idea that people are free to vomit forth unkind and obnoxious tweets whenever they feel such are warranted.

As someone who has volunteered at a crisis hotline, I am shocked by her choice to subject a suicide hotline to a barrage of angry telephone calls. She should be ashamed of herself. If someone kills himself after he couldn’t get through to a helpful voice, his blood will be on her hands.

Her brag that she can’t be touched as a tenured professor is also grossly inappropriate. Her poor judgment reflects badly on any university that would employ her. As such, she should be fired for intentionally dragging her employer into her personal political crap.

Her arrogance while boasting of her unaccountability is most enraging. That’s all I’m going to say. I know I’m not thinking nice things about Jarrar, right now. (Jack probably knows that about me, too.) I mean: I was going to say something about “her expression” in the photo, in response to Jack’s question about whether he is the only one who finds her expression “unsettling” – something along the lines of “not unsettling – just cute – an ideal face for the prey of a rapist.” But, I wouldn’t wish her any more victimhood than she already owns, or want her to miss work for it.

Thanks, Joe – do you mean “suddenunexpectedintercourse?” Sort of like a Joe Biden-grope or a “Copafeel” GHW Bush tush-pinch? [I tried to write the preceding while laughing too hard (after reading your comment) to keep my hands steady on the keyboard.] I swear, leftists just don’t have ANY sense of humor – and are too blind to appreciate when one of the “politically different” pays one of their own a compliment. I said Jarrar looks CUTE! Okay, maybe in a 1920s silent movie way, but still…cute.

Chris has proven himself a smug hypocritical party hack, not interested in actual discussion, debate, or fair treatment. He is unethical, as as such I will not dignify his responses any further. Do not feed the trolls.

There you go again, Chris. I didn’t say I hate the professor. I hate what she said, and I’m over that now. Your projections onto people you consider weird and creepy are weird and creepy. Give it a rest. I doubt she’s ever going to be raped, anyway.